Let Inspectors General Do Their Job

In the aftermath of the Watergate scandal, Congress in 1978 passed the Inspector General Act, establishing independent watchdogs whose job it is to uncover waste, fraud or abuse across scores of federal departments and agencies.

These public servants are “our eyes and ears within the executive branch,” as Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa described them in December.

Under the 1978 law, inspectors general, who are based in the agencies, have access to “all records” needed to do their job. But since the early days of the Obama administration, many agencies have systematically thwarted that access for whole categories of information — including, most notably, grand jury testimony, personal credit data and information from wiretaps.

The effect has been to slow down investigations into, among other things, the shooting of civilians during Drug Enforcement Administration raids in Honduras, sexual assaults in the Peace Corps and the F.B.I.’s antiterrorism powers. Inspectors general have spent time and taxpayer dollars arguing for access to documents they should, by law, have in hand — denying the American people the robust scrutiny of their federal government.

Last July, the Office of Legal Counsel, which provides legal opinions to the president, issued a 68-page memo defending this obstructive behavior. Because certain documents are protected by statute from being disclosed publicly, the memo reasoned, agency officials must determine whether to hand them over to inspectors general.

This makes no sense. The whole point of an independent monitor is to counteract the self-interest of the agency it monitors. Giving inspectors general access to critical information is not the same as making that information public. Congress understood this back in 1978, and it has since reiterated the need for total, unmediated access — most recently in 2014, when it barred federal agencies from spending any money to deny inspectors general “timely access to all records.”

Equally important, for nearly three decades no one questioned the authority of inspectors general to obtain sensitive or protected information, and no one accused them of mishandling it. The problems began in 2010, when lawyers for the Federal Bureau of Investigation started to claim that they were barred by law from handing over certain documents.

As it is, inspectors general already operate under significant constraints. They cannot tell agencies what to do; they can only issue reports and urge the agencies, or Congress, to take corrective action. And even those reports are vetted by the agencies themselves before release, which erects another barrier to transparency.

Still, the inspectors’ work has managed to expose thousands of cases of wrongdoing by government officials, including the F.B.I.’s violation of its wiretapping and other intelligence-gathering procedures, the Justice Department’s roundup of hundreds of illegal immigrants after the Sept. 11 attacks, and many more.

On Tuesday, the Justice Department’s inspector general, Michael Horowitz, announced an investigation into the actions of the F.B.I.’s Hostage Rescue Team during the late-January shooting in Oregon that led to the death of an anti-government activist.

The Justice Department, where the pushback against the inspectors general’s work began in 2010, now supports giving its own inspector general full access to documents. But meaningful legislation must cover all 72 inspectors general.

Congress is currently considering a bipartisan bill, sponsored by Mr. Grassley, to make clear once again that inspectors general may not be hindered in performing basic, critical review. The bill has been held up in the Senate since last year for unexplained reasons.

It is no surprise that government officials don’t want their wrongdoing or incompetence made public. Inspectors general are on the front lines of ensuring the transparency needed if government is to be held accountable. They should have unfettered access to the materials they need to do their job.